Flora and Ulysses

I am so sorry about last week.  Hopefully this week I can catch back up on the blog.

We have finally finished Flora and Ulysses.  Last Thursday we read the poem that Ulysses wrote to Flora.  If you had told me at the beginning of the year that I would read aloud a book about a flying squirrel that wrote poetry, I would not have believed you.  I would have believed you even less if you told me that the book was the Newbery winner.

To reflect on the book I gave the class a choice board on Friday.  A choice board just gives the students different options of how they want to share their thinking about the book.  Some of the choices on the board include writing an I Am Who I Am poem or creating a Venn Diagram to compare this book to other Kate DiCamillo books or my favorite create a Doodle for Google for Flora and Ulysses.

I got to see the first drafts of some of these projects today and was blown away.  I cannot wait to scan some of the Doodle for Googles and put them up on the blog.  If you are not familiar with the Doodle for Google, it is the picture that seems to change daily for the Google home page.  For example if you go to Google today you will see a Doodle Google that celebrates Saint Patrick's Day.

The class created Doodles with all types of nods to the book.  One of my favorite ideas was turning the two O's in Google into William Spiver's glasses.  We also had the O's turned into doughnuts and sunny-side up eggs and even a squirrel trapped in a sack with a crumpled up poem.  The creativity was amazing.  The Doodle's also showed just how much the students understood the book.

I cannot wait to see more of these projects as the students finish up their projects this week.  I hope you are all having a great start to your week and enjoying your Saint Patrick's Day.

Flora, William, and Ulysses

Have you ever read a book and you do not want it to end?  I love and hate this feeling all at the same time.  Unfortunately and fortunately this is exactly how I am feeling right now about Flora and Ulysses.  We are just a few pages away from the end.  I want those pages to last forever.  Today I wrapped up read aloud a bit faster than usual.  I just do not want the book to end.  At the exact same time I cannot wait to see how the book ends.

I have not read this book before I started to read it aloud to the class.  I love it when I get to share a new book with the class.  Yes, there is a bit of a risk not reading the book beforehand that the book will be a dud, but I love taking that risk.  I think when I am reading a book for the first time with the students my thinking is more authentic.  The students really see how I attack a book as a thinker.  They are able to see how my thinking progresses throughout a whole book.  They are able to see my excitement build as the book grabs and holds my attention.  They are able to see that sometimes my thinking is incorrect but I change that thinking as the text forces my thinking to change.

I think I am going to get one more chance to start a new book this year.  I have a few titles that I am thinking about starting after Spring Break.  Right now I think the choice is so hard because I feel like the book has to live up to Flora and Ulysses.  I guess it is not really a bad problem to have but right now it seems like a huge problem.  

I hope that you are all having a great week.  

Hero

We continue to talk about the idea of a hero.  Right now we are looking at our third literary hero, the Red Cross Knight.  Last week we finished reading Margaret Hodges amazing book St. George and the Dragon.

The text and the illustrations in this Caldecott winning book were stunning.  Today we continued to talk about the Red Cross Knight but this time we read a different version of the story.  The text that we read today was Jane Yolen's poem Why Dragon's?  

I really love looking at two texts that tell the same story.  It allows us to compare and contrast the texts.  This is exactly what we did today as we read.  The first time we read the poem the class just read for enjoyment.  On the second reading I asked the class to highlight anything that was similar in the poem to the book that we had read.  Then for our third reading the class grabbed a different color highlighter and searched for anything different in the two texts.  I was amazed at all the class was able to tell me about the differences and similarities between the two stories.

Tomorrow we are going to take this idea of looking at multiple texts to the next level and look at how the story of the Red Cross Knight was told through art.  We will look at a painting by Raphael and a sculpture by Donatello.  

I hope you are all having a great start to your week.  

World Read Aloud Day

Happy World Read Aloud Day!!

I have done nothing but read aloud today.  My day was awesome.  I just put Emerson to bed and got to read her a few of our favorite stories.  Right now as I am typing I can hear Mrs. Tarr reading aloud to Beckett.

I love my job, but the best part of my job is getting to read aloud to students.  I not only enjoy reading aloud but I think it one of the most important parts of our day.  Read aloud allows me to share my favorite books and authors.  I hope by sharing these authors and books that the students will find authors and books that they love.  Read aloud allows me to share how I think as I read.  I wish students could see what is going on in my brain as I read.  Read aloud allows this to happen.  I can let students know how I notice things about characters, the setting, or little signs that the author has left in the text.  Then the students can try to do these same things as they read.  Read aloud allows me to take a class to a zoo inside a mall or to a small village in China or to Blundermeecen.  The books that we share allow us to travel to far away places and meet new friends and face enemies.

Read aloud is the base of my structure.

So what do you do on World Read Aloud Day...you read aloud.  I started by reading aloud the book Love that Dog by Sharon Creech.

This is a short novel, but I was hoping I could fit the book into one day.  How cool would that be if I read a whole book in one day!  The book is a group of poems/short texts written by a young student named Jack pieced together to create a story.  In just over 30 minutes I finished the book.  In one day we got to watch Jack change as a character and a writer.

Then I had to read aloud the book Journey by Aaron Becker.  

This book is amazing.  It tells its story without using words.  The best question of the day was, "Mr. Tarr can it count as read aloud if you are not reading?"  Yes...Yes...Yes.  

Then we checked back in with Flora and Ulysses.

What a day in this gem of a book.  We had a fake letter, a kidnapping, and a girl who realized who she trusted.  I cannot wait to see how this books turns out.

To end all this reading, we checked in on a Jane Yolen book.

  

I want you to know that students love to be read aloud to.  You might think they are too old or not interested or any of the thousand of other excuses, but it is not true.  Each day when I stop reading you can hear groans.  Kids love this time.  

Hope you are having a great week and an amazing World Read Aloud Day.

Books, Books, Books

Today the room was filled with books.

There is nothing better than when I see students starting to carry the book that I am reading aloud.  Over the last few days I have been seeing more and more copies of Flora and Ulysses.  Some of the copies are from the library and some are from the latest Scholastic order.

We also added a lot of books by Jane Yolen to the classroom.  I was lucky to find a rather large stack of Yolen books this weekend at the library.  Today during reading time I saw students around the room reading all types of Jane Yolen books.  One thing that I love about having Yolen as the author we are studying is that she has a good amount of poetry books.  I noticed her poetry books were some of the first ones checked out this weekend.

We also started to read St. George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges.  

Books, books, books....it was a great way to start the week.

I Am What I Am

I just had a book group finish one of my favorite books Because of Winn Dixie.

If you have not read this book, I highly recommend you give it a read.  When the students were done reading, I wanted them to show me their thinking about the book.  This time I had the students write an "I Am Who I Am" poem.  

During my graduate program with the Ohio Writing Project at Miami University I took a class on writing multi-genre papers.  One of the assignments was to write an "I Am Who I Am" poem.  At first I did not think that I would enjoy the assignment.  When I gave the poem a try I wrote the poem in the voice of Ivan from The One and Only Ivan.  I instantly fell in love with the style.  Later for my final project in the class I wrote an "I Am Who I Am" poem in the voice of Piggie from Mo Willems Elephant and Piggie series.

When I have the students write these poems I always give them a copy of my original Ivan "I Am Who I Am" poem.  Here is the copy of the poem that I give to the students:

I am what I am and I am a gorilla     I am what I am The One and Only Ivan     I am patient as stones    nine thousand eight hundred and seventy-six days      in my domain     put on display     only company my Not-Tag, a dog, an elephant, and a little girl     

I am what I am I am an artist    an artist who paints to hide the pain     an artist without an audience      except for a little girl     an artist who can see the beauty surrounded by so much ugliness    

I am what I am I am a prisoner   a prisoner who just realized their prison    a prisoner who committed no crime     a prisoner who forgot the other side

I am what I am I am a friend    I am a friend      I am a friend who made a promise     I am a friend who made a promise he cannot keep     I am a friend who lost his friend

I am what I am I am a rememberer     I remember what they did to my parents    I remember what happened to my sister Tag    I remember the roller coaster and the trip through the drive-thru     I remember the dumpster that they dumped my friend into

I am what I am I am a protector     I am the protector who must not let it happen again    I am protecting her to keep my promise    I am protecting her to protect myself

I am what I am I am a silverback      I am a silverback strong and mighty      I am a silverback who must protect his friends     I am a silverback who paints to gain her freedom    I am a silverback with a message     I am silverback with no words even though they would be easier     I am a silverback      

HOME

I am what I am I am scared     I am scared for it is all new      I am scared I miss my prison     nine thousand eight hundred and seventy-six days     I am scared in this new domain

I am what I am I am free      I am free as a gorilla can be in a zoo     I am free to be with the others     I am free to be an artist     I am MUD

I am what I am I am The One an Only Ivan      

After that I let the students go and write their own poems.  For this project I wanted the students to write their poem in the voice of Opal or Winn Dixie.  Here are some of my favorite bits from the pieces:

I am who I am I am Opal a little girl who is lonely

I am who I am I am a daughter of a preacher and a mom who left me long ago

I am who I am I am lonely I am a girl who needs a little company in my life

I am who I am and I only know

ten things about my mother but the

most important thing is I know that she

loved me very much

I am who I am and I need a little company in my life

I am who I am I am a do I am

a dog named Winn Dixie I am a dog that 

was lonely and lost and beat up

I am who I am I am a special dog

I am a special dog who becomes 

a little girls company and friend

I am what I am I am a girl.

I am a lonely girl.  I have a dog.  I have

a dad that stayed and a mom that 

ran away.

I am what I am a owner of a 

dog    A dog that looks like a piece of wet carpet

MOM

I am what I am a question asker

I ask about my mom    I ask about the hurt

I know I will be happy,

My company a preacher, a girl,

two ladies, a man, and sweetie pie Thomas,

with two bald headed boys.

I am what I am I am a friend     I am a friend

to a helpful little girl     I am a friend

that will follow you from place to place

I cannot tell you how much I love this writing. 

I hope that you are all having a great week. 

The Reds are on the Radio

Nothing beats driving home from school today and getting to listen to Marty call a game.  I love listening to baseball and having the voice of a Hall of Famer call the game only makes it that much better.  I cannot tell you how excited I am about baseball being back.

This is a new part of my classroom that I am so excited about using.  I stole this idea from Mrs. Buskirk who stole the idea from someone at Berry.  The idea of the board is to have a place to assess what the students know.  For example today after we had spent time thinking about putting the steps of how a bill becomes a law in sequence, the class had to answer a question.  The students took a post-it note and wrote the answer.  Then they brought the post-it note to the board and stuck it in their spot. The board allows me to quickly see who understood and who needs a bit more practice on the topic.  

We also used the board to share our favorite sentences from our at home reading.  This is a way to check up on the students, but I see it more as a way to check on my teaching.  If students are not understanding a concept, the board will tell me and I can reteach.  

I hope you are all having a great week.

Share Time

It is hard to pick my favorite part of the day.  I could pick the conversations that we have after read aloud.  The class raising their hands wanting to share more and more about what they are thinking as we read.  I could pick the moments when we race to find a word in a dictionary or race to put the steps of how a bill becomes a law into proper sequence.  The energy in the room as we race to show what we know.  I could pick from a million different parts of our day.  Lately, though, the best moments have come at the rocking chair when students share their writing.

I wish we could let everyone share each day but unfortunately we do not have the time.  Students rush over to show me what they have written.  Today the students had even more to share than usual.  I had notebooks left on my desk, so I could read the writing while students were getting ready at the end of the day.  I even had a student come see me before school to share what she had written last night.  I read notebooks as students lined up waiting to leave.  I loved reading all this amazing writing.  I thought I would share a bit of some pieces that I have heard over the last two day.  This first bit of writing is about a football game.

They mocked us, trash talked about us, they said we couldn't do it.  Because a team with 14 players can't beat a team like them in second grade because they said they were the best.  A year later the game is here the rivalry that has gone on for years and I joined that rivalry against Springboro.  We came toe to toe.  Head to head at our home field.  Ready to defend our turf.  And we did we took it to them.

I love this opening.  That list to start the writing is just amazing.  Also the toe to toe and head to head, sounds amazing.  Here is part of a piece on a lumberjack.

One two three the lumberjack chips pieces of wood.  One two three wham, boom, crash.  Trees fall one by one.  The echo of the axe comes flying like a bird through the black and mysterious night.

These are just two examples of some of the amazing examples I get to hear each day.  I know I could not write like this when I was in fourth grade.  Our students constantly amaze me with their thinking and their writing.  I cannot wait to see all the writing I have waiting for me tomorrow.

Hope you are all having a great week.

Volume

I found this picture today on a tweet from the Prairie Lands Writing Project.  This picture is the perfect thing I needed after listening to Penny Kittle talk about volume.  What will make our students better writers?  What will make anyone a better writer?  Writing....More Writing....Even More Writing.  

Today I talked to the class about our Red Pen Writing.  Every Monday and Wednesday from now on I am going to ask the students to write for ten minutes at home in their writer's notebooks.  They can write about anything.  They can write in any style.  I just want them to write.  We are going to call this Red Pen Writing because I bought a massive supply of red pens for the class.  When they are writing at home on Monday and Wednesday, I want them to write using their red pen.  If they lose the pen, all they need to do is ask for another pen.  

You would think that most of the students would have been upset about me telling them about Red Pen Writing.  I know that not all students are probably excited about this new idea but some of my favorite questions today when we were talking about our Red Pen Writing included: "Mr. Tarr if we want to write for more than ten minutes, is that OK?" and "Mr. Tarr if we want to do Red Pen Writing on Tuesday and Thursday and Monday and Wednesday, is that OK?"  

I love our class.

We also got a new teacher in writing today...Jane Yolen.

I love Jane Yolen.  She is an amazing author. 

We are going to spend the next few weeks noticing things in Jane Yolen's writing.  This will be very similar to what we did earlier this year with Cynthia Rylant.  To introduce Mrs. Yolen to the class we read Owl Moon.  I typed all the words from the book out for the students.  I wanted them to see the beautiful words that she used as I read aloud.

When we were finished listening to the book, I read the story again and had the students think about their favorite lines.  The students used pencils to mark their favorite parts.  In the end we forced the students to pick just one line or part and highlight the section.  Then we went around the room and students read aloud their favorite sections.  The read aloud sounded very similar to a poem in the round.  Tomorrow we will have students write their favorite parts of the book on sentence strips and we will work on making a class Owl Moon poem.

After all this, it was time to write.  I showed students how I was going to lift a line from Owl Moon to start a bit of my own writing.  The students could try this technique or write about a time they did something special with someone they loved or write about anything they wanted.  The students went off and they wrote.  The writing as usual blew me away.  Tomorrow I will share some of the amazing pieces that students shared at share time.  

Hope your week is off to a great start.

Dublin Literacy Conference

On Saturday I got to attend the Dublin Literacy Conference in Columbus.  It was amazing.  I love the chance to listen to other teachers and experts in our field share their ideas.  I went to Dublin thinking that the highlight of the day was going to be Penny Kittle (who was amazing), but the real highlight was the turnout by Lebanon teachers.

Teachers and principals from Donovan, Bowman, and Berry seemed to be everywhere.  I even went to a session where the spectacular Megan Ginther (fifth grade teacher at Berry) presented her ideas on literacy contracts.  I was amazed at the dedication of these teachers and administrators who gave up a Saturday (and a beautiful one at that) to better their craft.

I loved my conversations throughout the day: talking to Mrs. Reuber about former students and understanding just how much she knows and cares about her students, thinking of ideas with Mrs. Nemo about how to reset our focus to make our students love reading, reconnecting with Mrs. McHenry about books and writer's notebooks, being reminded by Mrs. Winchell that it is always about putting students first, chatting with Mr. Waspe about ways we could connect the amazing things that are going on at Berry with the amazing things going on at our other schools, and all the other conversations I had throughout the day with other Lebanon teachers.

Penny Kittle was the keynote speaker of the day.  I also sat through two session where she talked about conferring and writing.  I have been looking through the notes that I took through her sessions and the notes are filled with brilliant nugget after brilliant nugget.  The two main pieces I will be taking away from her presentations are let the book do the work and volume.

Let the book do the work is such a simple idea.  It means if you really want a student to read and fall in love with reading, you have to find the right book for that student.  I know we have been reading some amazing books this year (Flora and Ulysses, The One and Only Ivan, Flotsam, and countless others) but I really want this to be the focus of the rest of my year.  I want to get that one book into the hands of the students that will make them fall in love and see the power of reading.

Volume...I will talk more about volume later this week.

These conversations and sessions were priceless and will only make me a better teacher.  Conferences like these recharge my batteries.  I hope the class is ready for this week, because I am going to be ready to go when that bell rings tomorrow morning.

Hope you all had a great weekend.

Olympic Commercial

I love the Winter Olympics.  I am not exactly sure why but I love the Winter Olympics. I cannot skate.  I cannot ski.  I cannot snowboard.  I can barely sled down a hill without a major injury, but I still love the Winter Olympics.  This might explain why I picked an Olympic commercial to look at today in class.

Before we could look at the commercial, I had to revisit our claim from yesterday.  If you do not remember, we had looked at an advertisement for Pop-Tarsts.

The class had told me yesterday that this ad was making two claims: Pop-Tarts are fun to eat and Pop-Tarts are healthy.  I wanted to look at that second claim.  We always talk about supporting a claim with evidence, so we decided to look at the nutritional label and ingredient list to check the evidence of the claim.

I had the class read the nutrition part of the label first.  They were looking for evidence that Pop-Tarts were healthy.  The class quickly concentrated on the amount of sugar in the Pop-Tarts.  Then I had the class read the ingredient list.  According to the ad Pop-Tarts are "baked with real fruit."  The class searched the ingredient list for fruit.  We did find fruit but we were surprised to find apple and pear listed in the fruits that we found.  Even more surprising was the fact that Pop-Tarts contained less than 2% of these fruits.  Looking at the ad you would think there was a lot more fruit in these Pop-Tarts.  Then the class talked about whether or not they thought Pop-Tarts was being truthful with their advertisement.

Now back to the Olympics.  I wanted to keep thinking about this idea of claims so I showed this commercial to the class.

Just like yesterday I had the class keep a list of what they saw or heard or read during the commercial.  The class made a great list noticing lots of little things about the commercial.  Then we repeated the process of having the students write down the claim of the commercial.  

One thing I like about looking at these claims is that students can often find more than one claim in a text.  Most of the students focused on similar claims.  One claim that I heard over and over was that the ad was claiming that it is alright to fall or fail or crash as long as you keep trying.  I love this message.  I constantly tell the students that making mistakes is alright.  This commercial I think really drove that point home with some students. The students were able to tell me they thought this was the claim because in the beginning of the commercial everyone was falling, but by the end they had become olympians.  

Many students also thought the commercial was claiming that moms are responsible for turning us into the people that we become later in life.  The students talked about the moms putting ice on injuries and helping their children off the ice and lifting little ones out of this snow.  Then at the end of the commercials you see the moms in the crowd watching their children shine at the olympics.

I think the class is doing a great job of finding claims and evidence in the texts that we are looking at in class.  

I hope that you are all having a great week.

Looking At More Claims

I loved the warmth today.  We got home from school and instead of having to run in and turn on the fire we went outside and rode bikes.  I am done with winter.  I know that there will be more winter, but I got my first taste of warmth and I want more.

Today during school we looked at an advertisement for Pop-Tarts.

When the students were looking at the advertisement, I asked them to create a list of everything they saw.  The list was great as usual:

• I see red background
• I see words made with pop-tarts
• I see plump, juicy blueberries
• I see red, red strawberries
• I see the words baked with real fruit
• I see green and purple grapes on the vine
• I see the words made for fun
• I see frosting and sprinkles

The list went on and on and on.  I finally had to stop the class so we could take the next step.  For that next step I had the class think about what Kellogg's was claiming.  I made sure to remind the students  of the list we had created to help them to figure out the claim of the article.  I also wanted the students to tell me what in the advertisement helped to make the claim.

I was amazed how the class was able to figure out the claim of the advertisement.  I had many different answers but I will try to sum up some of my favorite, "Pop-Tarts is claiming that their pop-tarts are healthy.  They have pictures of fresh fruit and the words baked with real fruit.  They are also claiming that pop-tarts are fun.  The ad has the words made for fun and some of the words are spelled out with pieces of pop-tarts."

I wanted the students to think about why the ad had two different claims one of health and one of fun.  I asked the groups to talk about this at their tables.  I was glad to hear at every table the answers the healthy claim is for the adults and the fun claim is for the kids.  

I think this thinking that both classes was able to show was remarkable.  I cannot wait to think and share and write more claims in the next couple of weeks.

I hope your week is off to a great start.

Hero

Our hero unit is starting to pick up steam.  Today we started to read about Jason our second literary hero.  It was great to see the class make connections between Jason and Hercules.  As we are reading the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, we are having the students stop at the end of every few paragraphs and talk at their tables or in their groups about the most important words.  

The students are doing an amazing job of finding the important words in the text.  When the students pick a word, they have to have a reason why the word is the most important.  It is fun to listen into the conversations at the different tables about the most important word.  Some of the time the tables will all agree but I like it when they disagree about the word they are going to pick.  Then the students have to use the text along with their thinking to prove why their word is more important.  These mini-debates allow for some great discussions about the text.

In our read aloud our hero squirrel Ulysses started to fly today.  Threatened by a waitress at a doughnut shop he leaped and started to fly around the diner.  

The moment was important in the book because of the reaction of Flora's father George.  When George saw the squirrel flying around the restaurant, the way he reacted struck us as strange.  I thought the moment was a perfect time to stop and let the students do some extra thinking.  

The class took some time and wrote in their read aloud notebook.  It was amazing to see what the class was able to share about what they were thinking about this important moment in the book.  I cannot wait to see what happens next in the book.

I need to keep it short tonight.  I hope you are all having a great week.

The Pro/Con List

Nothing beats a good list.  I have my grocery list.  I have a list of albums I want to buy (very long).  I have a list of books I want to read (just as long).  I have a list of ideas I want to try in our classroom.  I have a list of things I have to do around the house (this one is my least favorite).  Lists seem to surround me and lately I have noticed a lot of lists in our classroom.

We have been keeping a list about what we know about Flora the main character in our book Flora and Ulysses.  In one book group we have students keeping a list of what they know about Preacher and Opal.  In another book group we have students keeping a list of things they know about Pacy.  In our reading about heroes we are keeping a list as a class of the characteristics that we think heroes possess.

In class today we added one more list a pro/con list.  I love a good pro/con list.  A good pro/con list can make decisions so easy.  This week our class has been thinking about the decision of making the school year longer.  The reason we are thinking about this idea is we read an article from TweenTribune (great site for nonfiction texts) about how Governor Christie wants to make the school year longer in New Jersey.

We read this article on Monday and I asked the class the question...Why can't the governor just do what the governor wants?  This question is going to guide us throughout the next few weeks as we think about state government.

I remember when I was young I thought that governors and presidents just got to make all the laws.  I want our students to understand this is not the structure of our government.  I want them to realize that our government separates powers so that one person does not have all the power.  I want them to realize why this is a good thing.  I think the Christie article is perfect to help students understand this principle.

Now back to our pro/con list.  After reading a few more texts about extending the school year, I asked the students to create a pro/con list about the topic.  The list was amazing.  On the pro side students listed that more school would better prepare them for college or a career, more school could help them compete with other students from other countries around the world, and that more school could help students retain information instead of losing the information they learned over a long summer break.  On the con side the class listed that lengthening the school year would allow for less time with family, less time to travel, less time for the brain to rest after a long school year, and many other wonderful ideas.

Then in groups the students looked at the pro/con list and thought about what they were going to claim.  Most of the students stuck with their original claim of not wanting to change the school year, but I did have a few students change their original claim and say that we should extend the school year.  Tomorrow we are going to use the pro/con list we made to add evidence to our claims.  Then students are going to stand and deliver their claim to the class.  I will fill you in on that tomorrow.

I hope you are having a great week and that your lists of things to do is not too long.

Finishing our Poetry

Our students have been working so hard on their poetry.  I have been so impressed with so much of the poetry that I have got to read.  Last week the students got back their first drafts.  I had taken them for about a week and written them a page of comments.

I love this idea of giving comments in the middle of the process.  I know when I got my comments back when I was in school the comments always came too late.  My paper was had been graded but at least now I knew what I could have improved.  This is why I love giving my comments in the middle of the process.  Students have an opportunity to look at their writing and make changes that might improve the piece.  It is quite fun to see the decisions that the students make as authors to make the poems shine.

We are also typing our final drafts.  I think this might be the most exciting thing to the students.  We have the laptop cart for the week.  Today the students just got a few minutes but tomorrow they will have more time to work on composing their poems on the computer.  Last week we had spent time with the laptops going over some basics.  We talked about saving, what the red underline means, how to get to the next line, and so much more.  By now the students are experts.

The class has also been reading poetry.  We have spent the last few days looking back at some of the poems that we have shared.  I know that most of the class has their favorites but the two poems that I have loved this year are "Plowboy" by Carl Sandburg and "Wolf" by Georgia Roberts Durston

PLOWBOY

AFTER the last red sunset glimmer,
Black on the line of a low hill rise,
Formed into moving shadows, I saw
A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray,
Plowing in the dusk the last furrow.
The turf had a gleam of brown,
And smell of soil was in the air,
And, cool and moist, a haze of April.

I shall remember you long,
Plowboy and horses against the sky in shadow.
I shall remember you and the picture
You made for me,
Turning the turf in the dusk
And haze of an April gloaming.

The Wolf

Georgia R. Durston

When the pale moon hides and the wild wind wails,

And over the treetops the nighthawk sails,

The gray wolf sits on the world's far rim

And howls: and it seems to comfort him.

The wolf is a lonely soul, you see,

No beast in the wood, nor bird in the tree,

But shuns his path; in the windy gloom

They give him plenty, and plenty of room.

So he sits with his long, lean face to the sky

Watching the ragged clouds go by.

There in the night, alone, apart,

Singing the song of his lone, wild heart.

Far away, on the world's dark rim 

He howls, and it seems to comfort him.

Hope you are all having a great week!

The Voices In Our Head

First of all sorry about not blogging at the end of last week.  I will try to catch back up this week.  

The title of this blog post seems very dark, but I promise you it is not.  This summer I was rereading a professional book by Cris Tovani called I Read It, but I Don't Get It.  

This is how I would have described myself as a reader in high school and college, I read things but I really did not get what I was reading.  Things would quickly change for me with a few books that I read that taught me the things that good readers do when they read.

In Tovani's book she talks about the voices we hear inside our head when we read.  I love this idea of the different voices we might hear when we read.  I had never been told as a student that I should have multiple voices interacting with the text as I read.  The main voice we hear is the words of the text...our voice reading the book.  This voice is important but I do not think it gets you to comprehend the text.  It is those other voices that say things like, "What does this remind me of?" "What is going to happen next?" "Why is the character acting this way?" or any of the other questions that good readers are constantly thinking while we read.

I keep trying to talk to the class about the different things that our happening inside my head when I read.  I think too often students just believe they have to say the words of the text and they are reading.  I call this television reading.  All the students have to do is sit back and watch.  Real reading is different, real reading is more like playing video games.  The player is required to think and interact with the game.  Hit the "A button" to jump, the "B button" slide, and the "Z button" to crouch.

I hope that as you see our students reading you can ask them what they are hearing inside their head.  Are they thinking?  What are they thinking?  Did they start to think about getting a snow day and they need to go back to reread a section they missed?  You could also share what goes on in your head as you read. 

Hope you all had a great weekend.  

Conversations

I think that conversation is such an important part of a classroom.  I love it when our room is filled with conversation.  During read aloud we will constantly have students turn and talk about the book we are reading.  I think these conversations help with comprehension.  Students can bounce ideas off other students, they can hear different view points, or they can allow students to confirm an idea they have about the book.

One of my favorite ways to spark a conversation is with a silent conversation.  We have used these silent conversations a few times before and I have even blogged about using them before.  The idea of a silent conversation is simple...students have a conversation on paper.  One student writes an idea onto a piece of paper.  That piece of paper gets passed around the circle with other pieces of paper.  Students think about what other students have written and then add their thinking to the pages.

I think these silent conversations really allow some reluctant students to enter into a conversation.  I also love how the silent conversation allows students to disagree with others or even with me.  Too often I think students (while at school) are reluctant to disagree.  During our silent conversations students disagree in such a respectful way.  I hope the more we practice these silent conversations the more we will see these skills translate into our other types of conversation.

The silent conversation we had today centered around Hercules.  Some of the conversations revolved around what was Hercules hardest labor, is Hercules a hero, can heroes do bad things, and why does Hercules keep stealing even though he knows it is wrong.  It was so much fun to see how these different ideas forced students to share what they had learned from their reading and then add their own thinking to that text.

Today before school even started I got to have a great conversation about the book Notebook Know How by Aimee Buckner.

This is a book that a few of us Language Arts teachers have got together to read and discuss.  Today our discussion centered around the idea of helping students find ideas in their writer's notebooks and then get those ideas ready to draft.  It was great to hear what different teachers do to help their students think about how the ideas they have been creating in their notebook could be turned into projects.   

I hope you are all staying warm and having a great start to your week. 

Looking at Graphics

Today we started to talk a little about the upcoming Winter Olympics.  The newest Time for Kids has some great articles.  We did not have time to look at the whole magazine so we started by looking at a bar graph.  The bar graph showed the five most expensive olympics.  I was surprised to learn that Sochi was at the top of the list almost spending 50 billion dollars.

The class analyzed the chart and I simply asked them to tell me something that they noticed.  In an instant they all seemed to notice that the spending was increasing as the games became more modern.  This was simple to see, but then I asked the students to come up with reasons why the cost of Olympics was on the rise.  The answers blew me away:  newer technology might be used which would be more expensive, cameras are now HD cameras and might cost more, the countries might be having to make the events safer which would cost more money, more people might be coming to the games which would mean bigger venues which would cost more money, and the answer that amazed me security is being increased at Sochi which might be the reason for the high cost.

Then in Social Studies we continued to talk about federalism.  The class looked at this triple Venn Diagram.

I realize that might be small but this is a great visual text that shows how powers are divided between the different levels of our government.  Again I was amazed to see how quickly the class was able to comprehend this complex text.  

I love how we continue to look at these types of texts but also can still spend time reading more traditional texts in our class.  I know when I was younger when I did my at home reading it was always straight out of a book, but do not forget other types of texts.  If you find a great graph or pie chart in the newspaper, you might read that one night for your nightly reading.  I know I keep finding more and more of these examples of texts in all kinds of publications.  

I hope you are all having a great start to your week.

Souper Bowl

Tomorrow at Donovan the teachers all bring in soup and we have a Souper Bowl party.  Get it a "Souper Bowl" party.  I will not lie...I love this day.  Any excuse to get to sit and eat a bunch of different soups with breads sounds great to me.  Of course on the day we have hot soup served it is going to be the hottest it has been in the last thirty days.  I just finished my chili and it seems like it might be a good batch.

Tonight I have been working on finding a few infographics that we are going to use to look at the real Super Bowl and the separation of powers in our government.  I love looking at infographs.  I just found infographs a few years ago but I love how they show information in a visual way.  Here is an example of an infograph about vinyl records.

Sorry I realize that might now show up perfectly on the blog.  I think these infographs are just another type of text that students have to learn to read.  It also allows us to look at different types of charts and graphs.  I find the information inside of the infographs amazing.  For example one of the infographs that we are going to look at tomorrow claims that enough guacamole is going to be consumed on Sunday to cover a football field at a depth of 11.8 feet.  That is insane, but to be honest I know how much guacamole I will be eating so it might not be that implausible.  

I need to keep it short tonight.  I hope you are all having a great week.

Small Words

We have really started to work on the parts of words.  Each week now we are looking at a suffix or a prefix or a greek or latin root.  I really wanted the students to understand why we are looking at these small parts of the words, so I went searching on youtube and found this great video.

We watched this video in class last week.  I think it really helped the students understand that if they understand the smaller words or parts of a word they will be able to spell and understand bigger words.  

I have been so impressed with the class.  Obviously we have not been able to string together a large group of days.  Even with these constant breaks the class is working so hard.  Today I just started asking some rapid fire questions about the prefixes, suffixes, and greek roots that we had discussed.  It was amazing to see the retention the students were able to show me with their answers.  

Today also allowed us to get into our hero unit.  We started by reading an article about two cross country runners.  As a class we read the article and wrote our thinking all around the text.  The class shared some great thinking and I was really impressed that we also noticed some of the amazing writing from the piece.  

After reading the article we started to make a list of characteristics of a hero.  The class added that a hero is willing to help others and they might be persistent.  We will continue to add to this list of characteristics as we read more.  

Hope you are all having a great week.

State of our Classroom

Perfect night to fill you in on the state of our classroom.  If I had to pick just one word to describe our classroom right now it would be transition.

In social studies we are transitioning from learning about early Ohio history to government.  I love our unit on government.  In fourth grade we study state government.  We will dive into the topics of the different levels of government (federalism), the branches of government, the powers given to state government, voting requirements, the role of citizens, and much more.  One thing that I love about teaching about our government is that we will be reading selections of the U.S. Constitution and the Ohio Constitution.  I know these documents can seem daunting but we look at small sections of the text to determine their meaning.

In writing we are soon going to be transitioning from learning about poetry to looking at text structures that authors use.  I am excited for this unit.  I have never really taught a unit that was centered around text structures.  I think that giving the class the opportunity to look at how authors organize their non-fiction writing will allow them to think about why authors decide to use these different structures.  It will also allow students to understand that there are different options to present the information that they are trying to share.

In reading we are transitioning from learning about how Native Americans talked about the earth and sky to learning about heroes.  Yesterday I talked about how we started having students think about what they thought made a hero a hero.  Now we are going to jump right into the unit learning about heroes from the past and present in literature and real life.

Our last transition is that we just started a new read aloud last week.  The book is a change from the other types of books we have read aloud this year.  In the book Flora and Ulysses Kate DiCamillo and the illustrator K.G. Campbell include comic book pages along with the text.  Comics or graphic novels have become a very popular form of text in the last few years.  As I mentioned yesterday this book just won the Newbery medal award.  I got to tell the class the news of the award yesterday and they were extremely excited.  I have just found a group of interviews with Katie DiCamillo and I cannot wait to share them with the class.

I am so excited to get these transitions underway over the next few weeks.  I hope the students have been able to rest up over these extra few days because we are going to get to work.

Hope that you are having a great week.

Newbery Medal

Today the Newbery Medal was announced and the winning book for this year was Flora and Ulysses.  I am so excited about this announcement.  A few years ago when Mr. Franz became our principal we sat at the Junior High and went around the room and shared some of our goals.  I remember my goal was to read aloud or book talk the Newbery winner to the class before it was announced.

In the past I had book talked and read aloud honor books but never the medal winner.  Last year my luck started to change.  I read the book The One and Only Ivan to my class and then it won the Newbery Medal.

This year the winner is Flora and Ulysses.  

Sorry I could not find a picture that had the medal just yet.  I love that as a class we have found this book before it was announced.  Sure we are not finished with the book, but now as we finish the book we can start to think about why this book was selected over the other amazing titles that the committee considered.  

One of the reasons that I picked to read Flora and Ulysses for our next read aloud is that it fits with the theme of our next topic in reading.  Today during reading we started to discuss our next big idea...heroes.  Over the next several weeks we are going to discuss the idea of a hero.  Today we started by having the class write about what they think makes a hero.

I was so impressed with the writing/thinking around the room.  Two students who shared at the rocking chair shared a common idea.  To paraphrase their thinking, "a hero does not have to wear a costume or have gadgets or superhuman powers, they just have to help and protect others."  I loved this thinking and we just started.  I cannot wait to see where our thinking goes after thinking about this topic a bit more.  

Hope you are all having a great start to your week. 

Picture Walk

Today I had the students do a picture walk.  I found five pictures that went with an article that we were going to read about the Elk River chemical spill.  Here are just a few of the pictures that we used on our picture walk:

During the picture walk the class walked around the room and wrote down their thinking about the pictures.  Some students wrote questions or wondered about what they were seeing or just described the scene.  It was interesting to see the students try and figure out how the pictures fit together.  

After the picture walk we read an article about the chemical spill in the Elk River.  As we read the article the class was trying to figure out the 5 W's in the text.  Tomorrow we are going to have the students finish reading the article and write a news report about what happened in West Virginia.  

We have also started a new read aloud book.  Our new read aloud is Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo.  We actually started to read the book yesterday, but today we really started to get into the book.

I had started to read this book myself right before winter break.  By the time I got to the fourth chapter I had laughed out loud multiple times and knew this was going to be our next read aloud.  I hope you will ask your students about this book.  I know I love it and we are only on chapter four.  

Hope you are all staying warm and having a great week.